15mm STL Miniatures

15mm STL Miniatures for 3D Printing: The Historical Wargamer’s Sweet Spot

Ask anyone who plays historical wargames what scale they’d pick if they were starting again, and a lot of them say 15mm. It’s the size where an infantry battalion still fits on the table with room to manoeuvre, where the models hold enough detail to tell a grenadier from a rifleman, and where the printer isn’t running for three days to give you one platoon.

Our 15mm STL files cover most of military history, from Roman legions to the Eastern Front. Every model is prepared for home printing on resin machines like the Elegoo Mars or Anycubic Photon, and the larger vehicles and terrain pieces work perfectly well on FDM.

Why 15mm has lasted

15mm works out at roughly 1:100, which is a convenient ratio for a reason: it’s the same scale a lot of model armour and aircraft kits use, so finding compatible vehicles and scenery is easier than at more obscure sizes. It’s also been the backbone of historical gaming for decades, which means the rulesets, the basing conventions and the community knowledge are all mature.

The practical case is straightforward. A 15mm figure gives you enough surface for a face, webbing and a weapon that reads correctly, but you can paint a squad in an evening rather than a week. A full company fits in a small case. And on a standard table you can field the frontages that mass-battle rules assume instead of pretending eight models are a battalion.

What we make in 15mm

March to Hell WW2. The largest 15mm range we produce. German Wehrmacht, US Army and GIs, British and Commonwealth, Red Army, French, Italian Regio Esercito and Bersaglieri, Imperial Japanese Army, Afrika Korps, Fallschirmjäger and the French Foreign Legion. Infantry, command groups, weapon teams and specialists, plus a separate military vehicles range covering tanks, transports and armoured cars.

March to Hell Ancient World. Greeks, Spartans, Macedonians and Persians for the classical Mediterranean, and Rome across both the Republican and Imperial periods with Carthaginians, Celts and Germanic tribes as opposition.

March to Hell Medieval World. Dark Ages Vikings, Normans, Anglo-Saxons, Byzantines, Carolingians and Irish, plus 13th-century English and Scots forces and Reconquista armies from the Iberian Peninsula.

March to Hell Napoleonic Wars. French, British, Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies covering the 1805 to 1812 campaigns, with infantry, cavalry, artillery and named commanders.

March to Hell Vietnam. US Army, US Marine Corps, NVA and Vietcong for a period that’s badly served at this scale.

Printing 15mm at home

15mm is forgiving. A layer height around 0.03mm on resin gives you everything the eye can pick up at tabletop distance, and you’ll get a satisfying number of figures on a plate. Tilt models 30 to 45 degrees so resin drains properly and you avoid suction cups on the base.

On FDM, a 0.4mm nozzle at 0.08mm layers handles infantry acceptably, and vehicles come out genuinely well because flat surfaces and hard edges are what filament does best. Plenty of people run resin for the figures and FDM for the tanks and terrain, which is a sensible division of labour.

Frequently asked questions

What does the 15mm measurement actually refer to?
It’s the height from the base of the foot to the eye of a standing figure, not to the top of the head. A 15mm miniature usually reaches around 17 to 18mm overall. This convention catches people out when comparing ranges, because it means total height is always a few millimetres more than the label suggests.

Can I rescale these files to print at a different size?
Yes, and it’s one of the real advantages of buying digital. Scaling is a percentage change in your slicer. Two things to watch: thin parts like bayonets, spear shafts and gun barrels can become too fragile when scaled down, and detail starts looking soft if you scale up much beyond what the sculpt was designed for.

What resin settings work for 15mm figures?
A layer height between 0.02mm and 0.05mm covers it, with 0.03mm being the usual working setting for tabletop figures. Tilt the model 30 to 45 degrees to reduce suction and let resin drain. Exposure depends on your specific resin and machine, so run a validation test before committing a full plate.

Which rulesets suit 15mm?
Systems built around company, battalion and divisional play. Mass-battle rules that treat a base as a unit rather than a single soldier get the most out of the scale, because you can put realistic formation frontages on a normal table without the game becoming abstract.

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